{"id":1768,"date":"2012-11-11T00:52:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-11T00:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2012-11-11T01:11:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T01:11:35","slug":"toward-a-good-buddhist-fundamentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2012\/11\/toward-a-good-buddhist-fundamentalism.html","title":{"rendered":"Toward a (Good) Buddhist Fundamentalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Stephen<\/a>
Buddhist scholar\/teachers have a laugh at being called Fundamentalists (Stephen Batchelor on the left and John Peacock on the right with Madeleine Bunting, Associate Editor at the Guardian, in the middle).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I thought about calling this post \u201cIs Buddhist Fundamentalism like Christian Fundamentalism?\u201d But after seeing that the bulk of the discussion was clearly on Buddhism, and in fact supporting<\/em> a sort of \u201cBuddhist Fundamentalism\u201d I thought I\u2019d change the title.<\/p>\n

I have, on some occasions, been accused of being a \u201cBuddhist Fundamentalist\u201d over the past few years; usually for suggesting such things as the need to get back to the texts and exact meanings of key terms in order to understand the Buddha\u2019s teaching in a certain place, or in suggesting that certain schools of Buddhism seem to depart radically from what the Buddha taught.<\/p>\n

When I do either of these, I am implicitly assuming that \u201cwhat the Buddha taught\u201d is limited \u2013 the Buddha is\/was not a divine being capable of giving teachings throughout history. He was a man who lived about 80 years and taught for 45 of those years.<\/p>\n

I also assume that the best access to what he taught is in texts. I\u2019m not naive in thinking that the texts \u2018preserve\u2019 anything like a perfect historical record, but it\u2019s reasonable to believe that many of the historical events that happened in them\u00a0actually happened<\/em>. Much of this is corroborated by other texts and epigraphical evidence. There\u00a0were<\/em> kings such-and-such, and teachers such-and-such, and the historical Buddha \u2013 and they all did, to some extent, interact.<\/p>\n

Buddhism, like Christianity, is amazingly diverse. It has 2400 years of history, has spanned the globe, and can be found in dozens of canonical languages, many of which are extinct today. Some suggest that due to this we should talk about Buddhisms (and, I would guess, Christianities). As a student of Buddhist philosophy<\/a>, and perhaps more so as a lover of common sense, this strikes me as utterly\u00a0ridiculous. All things are composed of diverse parts.<\/p>\n

It is through language, conventional truth, that we create and use universal identifier such as \u2018Buddhism\u2019, \u2018car\u2019, and \u2018computer\u2019. If I talk about the history of the personal computer and you think I am speaking of the one sitting in front of you, and only that one, as if it represents perfectly every other PC in the world, you are, to be frank, an idiot. And in fact, you may be frustrated when I talk about things that don\u2019t apply well to\u00a0your<\/strong> PC, such as the development of the mouse (mine has a trackpad!). In fact a great lecture on the personal computer may not ever say anything about your particular computer.<\/p>\n

This is often how Buddhists today react when they see\/read something about \u201cBuddhism\u201d that doesn\u2019t focus (enough) on their own form of Buddhism, or doesn\u2019t self-qualify enough by saying \u201cI\u2019m covering certain generalities\u2026\u201d All too often, name-calling ensues.<\/p>\n

But what is \u201cBuddhist Fundamentalism?\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Buddhist fundamentalism, as discussed below (in the vide0) and often in cyberspace, is the privileging of ancient texts, almost always the Pali Canon, over everything since, including the beliefs and practices of contemporary Buddhists everywhere. It is, as Gregory Schopen recently described, \u201cBullshit to the 3rd power\u201d (I\u2019ll cover this in a separate post soon). \u201cBullshit to the 3rd power\u201d is, more specifically according to Schopen, any discussion of \u201cwhat the Buddha\u00a0really<\/strong> meant.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this does seem to be the main concern of Buddhist Fundamentalists like Batchelor and Peacock.<\/p>\n

The point that Peacock (one of my teachers during my MA days in Bristol) makes in responding to the question posed about being a Fundamentalist is excellent: that those who are concerned with understanding the early texts do so in\u00a0conversation<\/em> with tradition, not in\u00a0isolation<\/em><\/strong>.The second part of his statement is a bit more\u00a0controversial, that getting us back to the early texts gets us to a (mythical?) time before dogma.<\/p>\n

This is however very different from the dogmatisms of other religions, namely Christianity and Islam, isn\u2019t it?<\/strong> For Buddhism, at least according to Batchelor, Peacock (and myself to some degree), getting back to the \u2018fundamentals\u2019 means getting to a sort of pragmatic psychology which is meant to address universal human ethical concerns. For Christianity, there is usually the same \u2018getting back to\u2019 elements, but these are usually restricted to Jesus\u2019s saying that \u201cI am the truth, the way\u2026. only though me\u2026.\u201d and some of Paul\u2019s writings and then an assortment of Old Testament \u2018laws\u2019 that support their own particular brand of restrictive morality.<\/p>\n

Buddhist Fundamentalists<\/strong> (who might be one of those categories of people you can count on the fingers of one hand) aren\u2019t people you should really worry about. They (we?) seem to believe that Buddhism\u2019s most important thing is\u2026 the Buddha \u2013 and his teachings. And that the best way to them is the Pali Canon (though comparisons with existing Sanskrit\/Chinese versions of the suttas are great). They acknowledge that the texts we have are \u2018of a later date\u2019 but also believe that oral preservation in India was as much a science as it was an art and thus trust that most of the teachings attributed to the historical Buddha did in fact come from a historical person: Bho (dear) Gotama, the wanderer, the Tathagata, the Buddha; and that we can use the\u00a0differentiations\u00a0in the many different versions to learn more both about the different historical circumstances of the different schools, and, perhaps even to discover mistakes in the texts that the tradition has taken to be most authentic.<\/p>\n

Buddhist Fundamentalists<\/strong> are<\/em> critical of the whole tradition, which includes the texts themselves, the early commentaries, and everything after \u2013 including contemporary Western Buddhists. And Fundamentalist Buddhists\u00a0aren\u2019t<\/em> exclusively Western. I\u2019ve met several Buddhists from Asia that share this ideal of getting back to the basics. In fact, many discussions of \u201cBuddhist Modernism\u201d in Asia or \u201cProtestant Buddhism\u201d discuss just this trend.<\/p>\n

One of my own hobby-horses to note in all of this is the sense in which\u00a0this is not all terribly new<\/strong>. Buddhists have been reinventing and defending and justifying themselves and appealing to the \u2018original\u2019, \u2018early\u2019, \u2018true\u2019, and\/or \u2018authentic\u2019 teachings for about as long as Buddhism has been around<\/strong>. So while many Westerners are getting involved in this \u201creturn to the original\u201d<\/strong> Buddhism thing, it is not\u00a0because\u00a0<\/em>of Westerners that it exists. We can call it \u201cProtestant\u201d because it reminds us of Protestant Christians, and many will draw explicitly from the reasoning and strategies of Protestant theologians, but don\u2019t make the mistake of thinking that all of this\u00a0looking backward to find a truer present<\/em>\u00a0is caused<\/strong><\/em> by<\/strong> Protestant Christians or the Buddhist encounter with the West.<\/p>\n

Getting back to Schopen, haven\u2019t Buddhists, throughout history, always been concerned with \u2013 and happy to debate about \u2013 what the Buddha\u00a0really<\/strong> meant?<\/p>\n